I thought that once the lease was signed, Lynn Steven would be open in no time.  Not so much!  Daily I am asked when the boutique is going to open; if I had it my way it would have been a month ago.  I am start­ing to learn through this pro­cess of start­ing my own busi­ness that

1. things never go quite as planned, and
2. patience is a virtue

I am embra­cing the concept of going with the flow, and that some­times what I thought I wanted may just not work.  There are bound to be a mil­lion road­b­locks and obstacles in the way but there is always a way around them.

I come from a strong mar­ket­ing back­ground hav­ing taken Mar­ket­ing Com­mu­nic­a­tions at BCIT.  I have also worked for some of the biggest brands in fash­ion — Lacoste, Holt Ren­frew, Gap — and I noticed how care­fully they cul­tiv­ated their brands and began to appre­ci­ate the import­ance of a strong brand image.  I star­ted work­ing on the Lynn Steven logo and brand­ing about a year ago with the vis­ion of what I thought Lynn Steven was going to be — the look and feel, what I wanted people to say after they left the boutique, how I was going to mar­ket the store, etc.  How­ever now that we have the phys­ical space for the boutique, my ori­ginal ideas for the design and feel of Lynn Steven have changed.  225 Car­rall Street has so much char­ac­ter and his­tory that we want to respect.

Through many dis­cus­sions with my hus­band, as well as meet­ings with the great folks at MGB Archi­tec­ture, we’ve decided that the Lynn Steven logo needs some adjust­ments and that pink is not reflect­ive of the space.  After a bit of denial and inde­cision I have to agree.  I am not sure what I was think­ing with the pink and Gastown, they just don’t seem to go hand in hand. Gastown is gritty and edgy and the brand­ing of Lynn Steven needs to reflect that.

Like I men­tioned earlier, I am going with the flow and embra­cing the change.  This is not to say that I am com­prom­ising my vis­ion of Lynn Steven.  The fun­da­mental ele­ments will still be there, such as provid­ing an unpar­alleled shop­ping exper­i­ence for our cli­ents and really devel­op­ing those relationships.

You are likely to see some changes to the Lynn Steven web­site and Twit­ter account over the next few weeks.  There are no changes to the brands that we will be car­ry­ing.  I am excited for you all to come along on this jour­ney.  Don’t hes­it­ate to leave a com­ment on my blog posts, I wel­come the good and bad and would love to hear your feedback.

We are sub­mit­ting the per­mits to the city this week. I will be sure to doc­u­ment every stage of the pro­cess from demoli­tion to design to build out and beyond.

Until next time…

Tags: Branding, MGB, Store Design, The Store